Russia

Michael Hikari Cecire in The National Interest arguing that NATO should react asymmetrically to military provocations from Russia: “What would this look like in practice? Exhaustively fortifying the Baltic States is likely a strategic nonstarter, as even a perfect defense would likely only invite Russian countermoves elsewhere. Instead, Western states might link Russian provocations with […]

Most modern submarines are built with air-independent propulsion (AIP), but Russia still has not been able to make it work. This means that Russia still builds Kilo-class submarines with a propulsion system that is technologically outdated. A submarine without AIP needs to recharge the electrical batteries ever so often through a snorkel operation that puts […]

Did Russia jam GPS signals in Norway and phone services in Latvia and Sweden and during exercise Zapad in September? Apparently there are many indications that they did, and now Secretary-General of NATO Jens Stoltenberg has expressed his concerns about the Russian demonstrations of electronic warfare capabilities. Ideally, military units have redundant systems so they […]

The Russian ship Marshal Krylov has been updated to make it possible to track ballistic missiles. The story in Izvestia caught my attention because of a rather bold statement that the ship is now able to detect launched missiles anywhere in the world, which seems like a marvelous technical breakthrough given that the earth is […]

The Russian Baltic Fleet will be strengthened with two airborne regiments, reports Interfax. It is not quite clear what kind of regiments it is going to be, so the technical effect is somewhat unclear. But the message is that the new regiments will enforce the Baltic Fleet noticeably, and that the troops will be stationed […]

Many Western politicians are still reluctant to acknowledge that there is a fundamental and incompatible difference in values between themselves and the current Russian leadership. At least in Denmark we often hear well-meaning politicians argue that Russia is not really a threat, and that we can continue advocating human rights and democracy while simultaneously pursuing […]

You would expect border guards to know where the border is. Or at least you would think that border guards had enough respect for the concept of a border to keep a safe margin if they are in doubt. But nevertheless there were two cases in September where border guards entered illegally into Lithuania. The […]

Igor Fedyk tries to derive some conclusions about the just finished Zapad 2017 exercise in this piece called Zapad 2017: A Test for the West for Jamestown.org. I think some of his points are somewhat sensationalistic, though, and Fedyk partly falls into the trap of confusing the nature of warfare with sinister intentions on behalf […]

Not entirely new but very thorough description of how the Russian leadership perceives the strategic role and threats against Russia by Dmitry Gorenburg for Russia in Global Affairs. Fundamentally Gorenburg describes an interesting combination of aggressive behavior grounded in a perception of a defensive struggle that from a Western perspective can be hard to understand. […]

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Before the INF Treaty collapses, it is worth pondering why Russia is building a missile that breaks it. I argue that it is because they want a conventional missile akin to Tomahawk. It is silly if we turn this into a nuclear race.

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